immigration of other settlers among the Frisians and Saxons probably explains this.
The village arrangements in Sussex show examples of both isolated and collected homesteads. In some parishes, as in Kent, there are old place-names apparently of early settlements, distinct from the name of the parish itself. Such names, which are now applied to hamlets or farms, were in many instances probably the names of settlements by families in isolated homesteads. This plan of village occupation, which prevails so largely in the country west of the Weser, may have been introduced into Sussex by Frisian settlers. It may, however, be a British survival which some of the tribal South Saxons found here, and adopted in the districts in which it can be traced. In other parts of the county that are marked chiefly by villages of collected homesteads the old Celtic arrangement appears to have been replaced by that observable between the Weser and the Elbe, occupied by the old Saxons, and in the country north and east of the Elbe, occupied respectively by Saxons and Wends.
One of the most interesting circumstances connected with early Sussex is the migration of a large body of Sussex people at the beginning of the eighth century, and the establishment by them of a colony in Somersetshire, which will be discussed in the chapter on the South-western counties. The early date of this migration, which can be proved, shows that the tribal people who brought with them the custom of junior inheritance into the Rape of Lewes must have been early settlers there, and it is quite certain they were not, strictly speaking, Saxons.
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